That was good. We can credit intervenors, including U.S. congressional candidate Merrie Lee Soules, One-Hour Air-Conditioning, and our city, county, and attorney general.

But the proposed decision, apparently a huge victory for customers, would actually be a devastating and expensive loss if allowed to stand.

The relatively “small” overall increase is actually a huge increase to residential customers and a decrease for some large customers. Worse, most of the residential increase is to a “customer charge” that even the smallest customers pay, regardless of usage. Our poorest citizens get hit hardest.

Part of the reason we get hosed, and big companies get a decrease, is they have a Time of Use rate and we don’t. EPE determines rates mainly based on customers’ “peak usage”; but while big customers can cut back to save on peak, EPE discourages residential customers from decreasing their peak-time usage. EPE doesn’t give them a clear signal that shifting usage will save money.

Each of us needs to write or call the PRC seeking “Customer Choice.”

Intervenors have proposed a voluntary Customer Choice pilot program limited to 4 percent of EPE’s customers. Customers who signed up could use less energy at peak times and save money, the way large users can. Demonstrating we could adjust our usage would help both our wallets and our environment.

Why would EPE oppose Customer Choice? Because if EPE can keep “peak usage” high, it can sell the PRC on the idea that EPE needs to build additional huge (and wasteful) power plants to supply the “peak usage” needed on the highest-usage day of the year. If usage gets evened out more, there’s no such excuse.

We’re talking big money: EPE says it will build $1.1 billion in new assets over the next five years, possibly raising rates 40 percent – all to hit a “peak usage” need that doesn’t even have to occur. We’re also talking urgency: EPE will file its next rate increase in early 2017.

Only by implementing the Customer Choice pilot program now can we help stave off this madness, by showing that many customers, if allowed, will choose to save money by washing and drying their clothes at non-peak usage times. If we can’t implement it now, we can’t demonstrate that it works in time to forestall huge capital expenditures by EPE for unnecessary new power plants that we’ll be paying for over decades.

It’s a mystery why the hearing examiner proposes to deny us Customer Choice. The pilot program would be a small, sensible effort to gather accurate information. EPE might not want accurate information that could show its additional power plants would be a waste of money; but why should the hearing examiner or PRC – our employees – oppose it?

The proposed decision claims there wasn’t sufficient detail in the record; but intervenors supplied boxes of data, including four years’ worth of analysis, extensive data, and a detailed rate schedule.

The County Commission – led by Chairman Wayne Hancock and Billy Garrett – gave county attorneys clear orders to fight this; the city is doing the same. Please add your voice to the chorus.

My blog post today has further information and the PRC’s address; but at least contact our commissioner, Sandy Jones, at 505-827-4531 or Sandy.Jones@state.nm.us.

Ask that we be allowed to show what we can do. We need Customer Choice.